In a global survey conducted in 2023, three percent of respondents declared to be homosexual, gay, or lesbian. In Brazil and the Netherlands, for instance, nine percent, instead, identified as bisexual, representing the largest group of bisexual respondents among the 30 surveyed countries. Moreover, two percent of the interviewees in Switzerland said to be pansexual or omnisexual. Pansexuality describes people who feel attracted to other people regardless of their biological sex, gender, or gender identity, whereas omnisexuality refers to people attracted to people of all gender identities and sexual orientations.

According to a survey published in 2021, Senegal is the most intolerant country in Africa toward people of different sexual identity or orientation. A total of 98 percent of respondents from Senegal stated they would dislike having homosexual people as neighbors. Other countries in which over 90 percent of the respondents declared the same were Liberia, Malawi, Ghana, Mali, Guinea, Uganda, and Burkina Faso.

Worldwide, 64 countries criminalize homosexuality as of 2024. Most of them are located in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. In 12 countries, the death penalty is imposed or at least a possibility for private, consensual same-sex sexual activity. These countries are Iran, Northern Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Uganda.

In a global survey conducted in 2023, ***** percent of respondents from 30 countries declared that they were homosexual, gay, or lesbian, with **** percent who identified as bisexual. *** percent of the interviewees said that they were pansexual or omnisexual. Pansexuality describes people who feel attracted to other people regardless of their biological sex, gender, or gender identity, whereas omnisexuality refers to people attracted to people of all gender identities and sexual orientations. Finally, *** percent of respondents were asexual, which means they experience little to no sexual attraction to anyone, regardless of their gender. LGBT people around the world LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. Introduced in the 1990s, LGBT generally includes anyone who is not heterosexual or cisgender. Heterosexual refers to a person attracted to people of the opposite gender, whereas cisgender describes a person whose gender identity is the same as their sex at birth. Acceptance of other gender identities and sexual orientations is usually higher in Western countries. In a study conducted among 34 countries, acceptance of homosexuality was higher in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain. Homosexuality in African countries Worldwide, 71 countries criminalize homosexuality as of 2021, most of which are located in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. In Africa, 32 out of 54 countries criminalize homosexuality. In four countries, the legislation imposed the death penalty for sexual relations between people of the same sex. In fact, in most African countries, homosexuality has low levels of acceptance, or is not accepted at all. In a recent survey, most respondents in Africa showed high levels of intolerance towards LGBT+ in their vicinity.

Malta was rated the safest travel destination for members of the LGBT community, according to a 2023 ranking. With 13 points, the European country outperformed Canada and Switzerland - the following safest countries in the list. Out of the 12 best-performing countries that year, eight are located in Europe.

LGBT rights in Canada

Back in 2005, Canada was the fourth country worldwide to legalize same-sex marriage. The North American nation is in the vanguard of LGBT rights and has passed multiple laws assuring equality for this group, such as allowing adoption by same-sex couples, protecting transgender rights, and banning conversion therapy. Meanwhile, its land neighbor, the United States, had the share of the population that identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender increased steadily between 2012 and 2021.

Acceptance around the globe

According to a survey conducted in 2021 in 27 countries, opinions on the rights of same-sex couples varied greatly around the world. Western European and American nations were particularly supportive of marriage or, failing that, some form of legal recognition for homosexual couples.

Between 2021 and 2023, support for same-sex marriage declined in 14 out of 23 surveyed countries worldwide. The major drops were seen in Canada and Germany, where the share of respondents agreeing with same-sex marriage went down six percentage points. Still, over 60 percent of respondents in those two countries supported it.

The way to legalization

As of 2021, 30 countries have legalized same-sex marriages, most of them located in Western Europe. Switzerland was the latest to do so after a referendum, while the second to last was Costa Rica, as the only Central American country. While most countries have legalized same-sex marriage through legislation, in South Africa and Taiwan, this was enacted via courts' mandates. Taiwan and South Africa are the first and so far only countries in their continent to have legalized same-sex marriage.

Hostility and criminalization

The support and legalization of same-sex marriages is growing, and the acceptance of homosexuality is slowly but steadily increasing in more hostile countries. In Nigeria, for instance, homosexuality is a crime punishable with the death penalty. Despite a small increase, only seven percent of people believe that homosexuality should be accepted by society. Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are still the most dangerous world regions for homosexuals. In fact, 71 countries still criminalize homosexuality, and most of them are located in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Objective. Support for gay rights has increased in the publics of many countries over recent decades, but the scholarship on the topic has been hindered by the limited available data on these trends in public opinion. The goal of the Support for Gay Rights (SGR) dataset is to overcome this problem. Method. The SGR dataset is constructed by combining a comprehensive collection of survey data with a latent-variable model to provide annual time-series estimates of public support for gay rights across 118 countries and over as many as 51 years that are comparable across space and time. Results. We show these data perform well in validation tests and demonstrate their potential by replicating the influential but recently questioned finding of Andersen and Fetner (2008) that more income inequality yields less tolerant and supportive attitudes toward gay people. Conclusion. We anticipate that the SGR data will become a crucial source for cross-national, cross-regional, and longitudinal research that improves our understanding of the sources and consequences of public support for gay rights.

Discrimination against members of the LGBT Community is present in all European countries. The extent to which this discrimination affects gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or other queer identifying people in their day-to-day lives varies by country and region in the continent. In general, the countries of northern and north-western Europe show a smaller share of LGBT survey respondents saying they have experienced discrimination in the prior year.

Denmark and Finland both have less than a third of queer respondents saying they experienced discrimination based on their sexuality, with Czechia coming being the third least homophobic country in Europe in this respect. Czechia and Estonia are the only two post-communist countries in Europe to show lower levels of homophobia than the EU average, perhaps being related to their extremely low levels of religiosity compared to other former Eastern bloc countries, and their relatively high levels of economic well-being.

In terms of countries in Europe where discrimination is more widespread, there is a clear trend towards post-communist countries, particularly where religious adherence is stronger, as well as countries in south-eastern Europe. Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Greece all have more than half of LGBT respondents agreeing that they experienced discrimination, with other notable countries which rank above the EU average including Poland and Germany. Poland's conservative government have come in for criticism since they took office in 2015 for being particularly vocal against LGBT rights, having enacted laws which ban schools from teaching children about LGBT issues, make it more difficult for gay or lesbian couples to adopt, and having proposed a constitutional amendment which would outlaw gay marriage.

The small island nation of Malta was ranked as the country in Europe which has the most LGBTQ-friendly laws and policies in 2024 by Rainbow Europe. The country has made great progress in recent years in passing laws which protect the rights of its LGBTQ citizens and residents, such as outlawing so-called "conversion therapy", banning genital mutilation for intersex people, promoting anti-discrimination practices in the workplace, allowing transgender people to more easily change their gender legally, and legalizing same-sex marriage. EU states lead the way on LGBTQ rights Other leading countries in Europe for LGBTQ rights include Belgium, Denmark, and Spain, with the countries which performed well being concentrated in southern, western, and northern Europe. Many of the top performing countries are members of the European Union, which has specific provisions about protecting minority rights as a prelude to membership, however, it is notable that several member states in central-eastern and south-eastern Europe perform particularly poorly, notably Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria. The poor state of LGBTQ rights in eastern Europe Unfortunately, there are still some countries in Europe where LGBTQ rights are not respected or legally enshrined at all, mostly concentrated among non-EU members in eastern Europe. Azerbaijan, Turkey, Armenia, Russia, and Belarus make up the five worst performing states, with the homophobic stances of their governments intensifying in recent years.

According to survey conducted in eight countries, Spain is the country where people are more likely to identify themselves part of the LGBTQ+ community. It is also the country in which respondents stated more often to have a close friend or relative who is part of the LGBTQ+ community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, non-binary, among others). Sweden, Germany, Italy, and Denmark, on the other hand, record the highest share of respondents who were neither part of the LGBTQ community nor knew anyone who is part of it.

According to a 2019 survey, 54 percent of respondents from South Africa believed homosexuality should be accepted by society. Recognition of homosexuality in the world was highest in Western European countries, Canada and Australia. Despite Kenya ranking comparatively low in the global comparison, acceptance of people identifying as LGBTQ+ notably increased since 2002. Among the four African countries taken into consideration, the lowest degree of acceptance among interviewees was recorded in Nigeria, at seven percent.

Over the 2015-2018 period, nearly 900,000 people aged over 15 defined themselves as something other than heterosexual in Canada: 405,700 identified as lesbian or gay, while 493,200 identified as bisexual. The provinces with the largest number of non-heterosexuals people were Ontario and Quebec, which are also the most populous provinces in the country. In addition, with the exception of Quebec, bisexual people outnumbered lesbian or gay people in all provinces.

The cities in Europe where survey respondents most commonly indicated that they were a good place to live for gay and lesbian people were Rekjavik,Valletta and Groningen in 2023. In general, the cities which ranked as the best place to live for lesbian and gay people in Europe were in Nordic countries (Norway, Iceland, Copenhagen, Sweden, Finland), western European countries (Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands), and southern European countries (Italy, Malta, Spain). The five cities with the fewest respondents indicating that they were a good place to live were all in south-eastern Europe, with the bottom two both coming from Turkey (Diyarbakir) and Albania (Tirania). Turkey tends to rank so lowly due to the influence of traditionalist and religious social norms, which do not recognize LGBTQ relationships as being on a par as heterosexual relationships and lead to more commonly held homophobic views.

France, Portugal, and Greece are the three European countries with the greatest share of respondents indicating that homophobia is either fairly or very widespread in 2019. While this may indicate that these countries have a particular problem with homophobia, there is also a possibility that countries where people are more educated about LGBTQ issues, citizens are also more aware of discrimination.

For instance, some countries such as Bulgaria, Latvia, and Slovakia where most respondents say that discrimination against gay people is rare or non-existent also have higher shares of LGBT respondents indicating they have experienced discrimination in other surveys. It may be the case that in these countries, as LGBTQ issues are less widely discussed and education is less inclusive of the queer communities concerns, that the general public is less aware of homophobia.

On the other hand, countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, and the UK, where LGBTQ people report being able to have a greater level of openness about being gay in their daily lives, report more widespread homophobia. Paradoxically, it may be because of this widespread awareness and openness about LGBTQ issues that more respondents in the general public respond that homophobia is widespread.

This statistics shows a ranking of the friendliness towards the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in Latin America in 2016, broken down by country. In that year, Uruguay and Argentina ranked first on the LGBT friendliness scale, whereas Paraguay came in last with a score of 14.

According to survey conducted in eight countries, Great Britain is the country where people are more likely to support a family member of a friend who would come out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. The least supportive countries, on the other hand, seem to be Italy and Germany. In Italy, for instance, some 14 percent of respondents stated to be unsupportive, while in Germany, some 14 percent would oppose their friends or family.

Réunion was rated the safest travel destination in Africa for members of the LGBT community, according to a 2024 ranking. With eight points, the French overseas department outperformed South Africa, ranking 21st worldwide, while the Southern African country stood in the 38th position. These were the only destinations considered friendly for LGBT tourists in Africa. A country scores less than zero in the index when human rights are not observed, nor guaranteed, or even violated. This means that Angola, Botswana, Cabo Verde, Mozambique, Lesotho, Niger, Seychelles, and Mauritius were far from being considered safe, but were better-rated destinations compared to other countries in the continent.

According to a global survey conducted in 2021, three in 10 respondents had at least once spoken out against someone who was being prejudiced against LGBT+ people. In addition, some 13 percent attended a public event in support of LGBT+ people, e.g. a Pride march.

According to the Gay Travel Index published in March 2023, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Chechnya, and Afghanistan were the most dangerous places for LGBT tourists. Each of these nations obtained -19 points, which placed at the bottom of the ranking analizing 199 countries. The category that contributed the most to the four nations' final score was the death sentence for homosexuality.

Uruguay was rated the safest Latin American country for LGBT tourists in 2023, scoring 11 points. Following in the ranking were Argentina and Colombia, which rated nine points. In the Caribbean region, Cuba, Guadeloupe, and Martinique ranked for the top three places as the safest travel destinations for this group of travelers.